140 THE LIFE OF SCIENCE 



Greek knowledge was borrowed from eastern sources but we 

 do not know exactly when or how the borrowings took place. 



For example, the incubation rites which were practiced in the 

 Greek Asclepieia were in all probability derived from Egyptian 

 models. These rites were very important from our point of view 

 because, thanks to them, a large number of clinical observations 

 were concentrated in the temples, especially in the most famous 

 ones, Epidauros and Pergamon, Cos and Cnidos. The value of 

 such concentration requires no emphasis, least of all for the 

 medical art; for to make scientific inductions, it is not enough 

 to have observations, one must have plenty of them. Without 

 some means of collecting abundant clinical cases such as were af- 

 forded by the Asclepieia, the progress of medicine would have been 

 considerably slower. It is not too much to say that the Asclepieia 

 were the cradles of Greek medicine, and they help to account for 

 the extraordinary richness of the Hippocratic collection — but we 

 must not forget that they themselves inherited and continued 

 Egyptian traditions. 



On the other hand, Greek astronomy was largely of Babylonian 

 origin, though it was also inspired by Egyptian examples. The 

 Babylonian influence continued to make itself felt throughout 

 historic times, and it is probable that the precession of the 

 equinoxes was first discovered not by Hipparchos but by the 

 Babylonian astrologer Kidinnu (c. 343 b.c.) ; whether Hipparchos 

 borrowed that discovery from Kidinnu or not, it is certain that 

 he could not have made it without reference to the ancient Baby- 

 lonian observations. With regard to arithmetic, the continuation 

 of Babylonian and Egyptian influences is very striking. The Greek 

 preference for expressing ordinary fractions as the sum of frac- 

 tions with numerator unity and their use of a special symbol for 

 2/3 were obviously Egyptian relics, while their sexagesimal frac- 

 tions were Babylonian. 



There is perhaps no more fascinating subject than the study of 

 the transition from oriental science to the early Greek, and the 

 archaeological investigations which are being feverishly con- 



